Smoke River (30 page)

“Non-natives have rights too!” he yells, his voice high and thin. Kenneth rolls his arms, signalling his supporters to create a shadow line in front of the police. The townspeople scuttle forward as if learning the steps to a dance. The sign-wavers’ voices gradually grow louder and shriller as they repeat Kenneth’s chant. Behind them, two more cars drive up with photographers. One man jumps out, instantly rolls to the ground, and points his camera upwards. The other clambers onto his car rooftop, snapping his shots looking down and across the parallel lines of police and citizens, their chafing solitudes. The sign-wielders, energized by the cameras, yell even louder, thrusting their bodies aggressively around the upright police. The chanting becomes more frantic and uncoordinated. The townspeople are so close that their spit dots the visors of the police helmets.

And then a plane goes by pulling a banner:
DOREVILLE FALL FAIR
FUN
FEST! AUG. 30–SEPT. 2
. The twin-engine whine cuts through the chorus of yelling. Somebody points, and half the crowd crane their necks skyward. For a few long seconds there is silence, followed by a collective
what next?
A radio crackle breaks the impasse. The police move forward in lockstep, a coordinated march that shoves the parade back down the highway towards the town. Cheers and whoops sound from the blockade.

Kenneth’s voice screeches indignantly through the bullhorn. “Freedom from land terrorism! Freedom from government appeasement! Where’s the justice? Police protect the terrorists!”

Signs rattle as they hit the ground. Peg watches as Will Jacobs, the pub owner, shoves an officer and starts to flail with his hands. He is pushed to the ground, a knee in his back to subdue him. Next the junk-shop owner – a slip of a woman with a large frizz of hair – takes a swing at a broad-shouldered officer with her
TWO-TIRE JUSTICE
sign. It makes a sharp crack against his helmet.

Shit
, Peg thinks.
It’s a full dust-up, a melee
. The old Peg would get right in there, instill some order, allow the citizens to protest and the police to do their job, and herself to look like a beacon of practicality. But this new Peg – sanctioned by her own council, humiliated in the press – is hobbled, second-guessing, jettisoning confidence. She is not sure anymore about what to do with her energy, her need to problem-solve. She scrambles back to her
SUV
.

What? You did what?
Reid Wellings shouted at her just that morning. His tone suggested she’d become a liability for his own political ambitions. She’d let it slip that she’d gone to visit the native girl in the hospital.

When they were alone, the mayor had brushed her large hand over the girl’s forehead, a familiar gesture that belonged to a mother or an aunt. And this is what she is known for, being a leader with a soft touch. She shows up at important birthday parties and anniversaries, takes casseroles to the family when someone has died or got injured at work, clasps their hands and looks them in the eyes and says, “I’m sorry” in a way that people believe, in a way that takes on some of their sorrow.
I’m so sorry
, said the mayor, leaning near Cherisse’s face.
This is a terrible thing that has happened to you in a good place. A good place, I promise
.

How could you explain such a thing to that Chicken Little Reid Wellings?

She defended herself.
Think about it. It will show I’m neutral, that I maintain my care for everyone in need, regardless of which side of the blockade they’re on
.

The man actually harrumphed at her on the phone. Harrumphed!
You need to lie low, Peg, if you want to ride this out, save your career
, he said.
I mean, what if the assailant is white, a guy from this side of the blockade? Did you consider that? Do you realize what a tinderbox this place will be?

She went silent, made an excuse to get off the phone. When he hung up, she regretted not thanking him. Later on she might need that pinch-faced little weasel in her corner.

Now, watching her constituents – almost all of them avowed Redhill supporters – duke it out with the police while behind the blockade the protesters clap and egg them on, she feels punctured with doubts. She had assumed it was a native man who hurt the girl, left her face misshapen with bruises and a coffee-coloured crust on those pretty lips. Her ex-husband’s right hook could do that if his thumbnail was uncut; he’d catch the soft of her mouth so the gush would make an iron moat around her teeth. She never whimpered, lest it wake Gordon.

They all had trials to bear. At the hospital’s information desk, she made a point of asking about the university-bound son of the clerk. She squeezed the shoulder of the ward nurse. Enough to be taken notice of, while still being the model of discretion.

Peg puts her key in the ignition and is just about to reverse and pull away from the blockade, but she catches sight of something interesting in her rear-view mirror. The door of a black Buick Regal opens and a woman steps out. She would be mannish and hopeless, thinks Peg, were it not for the impeccable oxblood-coloured hair, the pricy-looking box-shouldered skirt suit, the owlish glasses. The woman lifts a pair of binoculars and sweeps them over the blockade and back again, taking in the horseshoe of police straddling or handcuffing ordinary citizens while those at the blockade whoop and cheer. She drops the binoculars, her chin pulled in like a surprised emu, and returns to the car’s back seat. A second later, Elijah Barton climbs out the other side and reaches back as if to shake someone’s hand.
Barton
, Peg thinks.
What has he got to do with any of this? That man is always gaming trouble for his own profit
.

She is still watching the Buick through her mirror when Reggie Holland pulls up in front of it in his burgundy Crown
Victoria, obscuring her view.
A quick chat
, he said earlier.
Can we meet at the blockade? I’ve things to see to there
. He hops out, gives her a little wave of recognition, and jogs in her direction. Peg makes a quick check of her lipstick, rubbing her finger along her teeth, opens the car window, and studies his approach from the rear and side-view mirrors. She wonders about that eyebrow tic of his, considers all the ways she might work that into the conversation.

Constable Holland comes to the passenger side, dips his head, and gestures at the empty seat. “Do you mind?”

She removes her purse and pats the passenger seat with an inviting smile. He slumps onto the umber-coloured leather, smelling of drugstore aftershave and spicy lunchmeat. He stares at his shoes for a moment; he’s worried. She has an impulse to run a finger along his temple. Instead she rests her hand on his shoulder in a way that shows concern but is above reproach. “Everything okay, constable?”

He doesn’t answer. She is about to risk a hand on the back of his bent neck when he straightens and looks at her with his adorably tired eyes. “Peg, did you visit an assault victim in the hospital recently?”

“The native girl?” she asks, shifting to face him. “Yes, I did. It’s something I make a habit of doing – community outreach. Terrible thing. Beautiful girl.”

He nods his head and looks down again. “Did you know I’m investigating the assault? Just me. There’s no one else they can spare.”

“Oh, I don’t envy you that, what with this blockade business. Will the reserve police at least let you into their jurisdiction to question suspects?”

Constable Holland looks up at her. Then he squints his eyes in a way that makes her scalp prickle with warning. He takes a deep breath. “Peg, I need to talk to that kid of yours. Get a fix on his whereabouts. Pretty standard stuff.”

Her next breath feels too big for her lungs. “Pardon me?”

“Peg, there’s an eyewitness tip about a red truck seen in the vicinity of the assault the night it occurred.”

“Oh, now, seriously?” A little rush of relief tickles the bottoms of her feet and she claps her hands. “Well, constable, you have your work cut out for you. There are at least four dozen red trucks in this town. And the reserve is lousy with them.”

Constable Holland clears his throat, examines the backs of his hands. “Peg, we’ve got tire impressions. Still good. I’m not an expert per se, but I know a thing or two, and these tires have deep voids, large lugs cut for flex. They’re specialty tires, Peg. Expensive, and barely street legal.”

His voice has morphed from friendly to phlegmy. She can see a grimy ring on his collar, a rogue nose hair tickling his septum. Up close, the man is unkempt, slightly repulsive. She straightens her spine to its full mayoral length.

“Well, you don’t need my permission to contact him. He’s an adult. I’m pretty sure he has some run-of-the-mill tires on that ride of his, but of course it’s important that you clear him.”

They both know it’s a lie. Peg bought the boy the truck as a gift, an extravagance. Gordo tricked it up like a Christmas tree, drove its special-order everything slow as a parade float through town, his arm hanging out the window. It took three months for his tires to arrive.

“All right, then.” Constable Holland slaps his thighs. “Just wanted you to know.”

“Sure thing.” She works to sound relaxed, as if the whole idea is too routine.

But as she watches Constable Holland lumber away from her
SUV
in his ill-fitting pants, a slightly hunched quality to his posture, she is marooned by doubt. Her boy – the child who ran to her, trembling, every time his father raged – was he capable of such a thing? She thinks of the comfort she’s taken in Gord’s
vagueness, their habit of merely orbiting around each other, indifferent and cold as night stars. If his father’s violence is surfacing in him, she’s spared herself the opportunity of seeing it. She pounds the steering wheel with a balled fist. It’s a godless universe that would put a woman through that twice. Already she feels adrift in the vast, lonely ink of scandal.

M
itch stands with his arms crossed in the corner of a curtained room, watching the tears in his wife’s eyes. They won’t spill; it’s not Ella’s style. The liquid will just wait on the reddened rims, brightening the grey irises, making her eyes look wider, flushing her skin pink, increasing her beauty. It has been so long since he has seen her like this.

She has climbed onto the hospital bed where their son sleeps. The boy leans against his mother’s side with his legs pulled up, knees bent like a small child. One foot is wrapped in fresh gauze, already stained with yellow ointment and brownish ooze. Under the wrapping, he is missing three toes. An
IV
snakes from a pole to the wrist he rests on his mother’s forearm. The sepsis means he will be in hospital for a few more days.

Mitch doesn’t know how three missing toes will affect a promising swimmer. He imagines some lost thrust, speed leaking through the peephole at the top of the boy’s left foot. Ella’s
brimming eyes must mean that she comprehends the loss better than he. She rubs the boy’s shoulder as if lulling an infant to sleep, stealing looks at her husband with her glassy stare.
Too much, Ella
, he thinks. She is overripe with that boy.

His wife whispers reassurances to their dozing son, and Mitch feels himself constrict with the need for such comforts himself. They can go home. Las will enjoy a long, drugged sleep. He wants his wife in his own bed, those eyes resting on his face, her long, slim hands strumming along his forehead, his temples, the way she did when they were first married and the troubles of establishing himself outside his father’s grocery trade robbed him of sleep. Now the stress of the blockade has spent any gentleness left between them.

Mitch moves over to the hospital bed, grasps the boy’s legs to straighten them and allow Ella to disentangle herself.

She leans forward, twisting her head, hissing. “Mitch! Careful. Careful!”

He reaches to take his son’s arm, move it to his hip. The boy’s jaw points towards the ceiling, his lips slightly parted.

Ella shoos off her husband. “Just leave him be. Poor kid, he’s been through so much.”

Mitch stands back. Would he like Las more, feel more for him now, if he’d been more active in the shaping of him? He’s been content to think of him as Ella’s son – her boy, her project, her problem.

“We’ll come back first thing in the morning, Ella.”

She screws up her mouth. “I don’t think I can move without waking him.”

“He’ll just fall back to sleep anyway.”

Mitch waits by the end of the bed, massaging the cool metal of his keys as if he does not quite comprehend. And he doesn’t.

Ella looks down on her son. Her eyes trace a faded scratch, like a ligature burn, on his neck. She is seized by a panic of doubt. Something is wrong with this boy, something more than this mark on his neck, the unexplained butcher-shop offal of his toes. It’s as if he has run very far from her and left behind a decoy. She no longer moors him, and she feels unmoored herself, spinning, vertiginous.

Her husband slips his hand under her elbow but she resists. The idea of Las alone for hours in this room, under the accusatory red eye of the
IV
pump, makes her frantic. She imagines a riptide of infection pulling him away from her. “Let me stay with him tonight, make sure he’s okay.”